I really don’t even know where to start on this post. This past week I’ve felt like my whole world has seriously come crashing down around me, and we’re only at the beginning. When we went to sleep last Sunday everything was completely normal, and then on Monday everything changed.

Monday morning when I woke up and went to work, Dart was acting like his usual self. He jumped down off the bed and got in his dog bed and waited for his usual doggie treat, except that he wasn’t very interested in the treat at all. I didn’t think anything of it to be perfectly honest, and thought that maybe he had a stomach bug because he’s a dog that is prone to “garbage gut” as my mom tends to refer to it.

Well Dart didn’t really stop acting weird that morning, so Chris thought that it would be better to take him into the vet just to be on the safe side. They ran a bunch of tests at the vet and what they found was that he actually had bleeding in his abdomen. There wasn’t anything that they could do for Dart at our normal vet, so they sent us on to a specialist.

When we got to the specialist, they walked us through everything that was going on with Dart and what it could possibly be that was causing the bleeding in his stomach. They had taken an ultrasound of his stomach and found that it was more than likely coming from a tumor that had ruptured on his spleen, and the only way to make it stop was to remove the spleen through surgery. They also told us that 75% of the time the reason that these tumors form is because of a very malignant form of cancer that the survival rate is just really small.

Once the vets had gotten Dart stabilized, we knew that surgery was for sure the way that we wanted to go. We didn’t want him to be in any pain, and even though it was a small chance that it wasn’t cancer, we knew that it was a chance we’d want to take.

We got to say goodbye to him before his surgery and I pretty much lost it right then and there. The last time that we saw him hooked up to all of the tubes and lying in a hospital kennel was right after he had his accident, and it just brought back so many hard memories. We went home after they took him into surgery, and we got a very happy call from the surgeon saying that everything had gone well with the surgery about an hour later.

The next few days were very tough. We got to go back to the hospital to visit him every day, and he was definitely very out of it the first day, but each day he looked better and better. On Thursday we got to take him home, and we were so incredibly over the moon. We still hadn’t heard back from pathology about if the tumor was cancer, but seeing him so happy and basically back to his old self was giving us hope.

We literally pulled into the driveway when we got home, and that’s when everything just came falling down all over again. The vet had just gotten the pathology results back and it was cancer. I basically spent the rest of the night crying and cuddling with Dart as much as possible because I just can’t imagine life without him. He’s my baby, the very first dog that Chris and I got together, and there will always be a hole in my heart that nobody or thing will be able to fill.

We have our meeting with oncology to talk about our options on Friday and I’m hoping against hope that there will be something positive that comes out of that meeting. But until then we’re just trying to spend as much time with him as possible, which meant that we spent the whole weekend all three of us just cuddling on the couch together.

I think that a blogging break last week was just what I needed when everything was going on. But I think that coming back to this space every week will be something that will help me to keep my mind off of everything, so I’ll try to keep everything light and bright because that’s what I need right now. But if I’m a little slow to respond on things, you’ll know why. Thank y’all for all of your thoughts and prayers for our little guy to make a full recovery.

Related

About Ashley

Howdy y'all! My name is Ashley and I'm your typical Texas girl and voice behind The Wandering Weekenders! I'm a wife to a loving husband, a mom to beautiful twin girls, an Aggie, and of course an avid traveler!

4 days agoby thewanderingweekendersThe weather around here has sucked majorly the last week or so. It’s been nothing but cold and rain and just ugh! So instead I’ll daydream about our time in Paris again where the weather was absolutely beautiful when we were exploring the city. By the way this is my attempt at being all travel bloggery and I totally felt uncomfortable posing in front of everybody else waiting in line for a picture! I guess I’ll never be Instagram famous #parisjetaime#paris#parigi#loveparis#visitparis#parismaville Read more…

5 days agoby thewanderingweekendersThere’s nothing quite like the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans! Things are always eclectic, especially on Bourbon Street! I can only imagine how crazy things are right now and are going to be on the eve of Fat Tuesday! #neworleans#frenchquarter#nola#nolalove Read more…

1 week agoby thewanderingweekendersIt never fails walking around the French Quarter in New Orleans you can always expect to see something interesting whether that’s people or things. But one of the things that I love the most about the French Quarter is the beautiful architecture! #neworleans#nola#frenchquarter#nolalove Read more…

2 weeks agoby thewanderingweekendersMy cousin is headed to Paris soon and when she asked me about our favorite things to do in the city, a short trip out of the city to Versailles actually came to mind! The grounds were absolutely stunning, but what really blew me away was the French countryside setup that Marie Antoinette had made for herself. She apparently fancied an “easier” life as a peasant. #parisjetaime#parigi#loveparis#visitparis#parismaville#versailles Read more…

3 weeks agoby thewanderingweekendersAfter 12 wonderful weeks at home with my girl, today was officially my first day back at work. It was very bittersweet to only have a few hours with them today, but I was also happy to be back in the world of adults and walking around the streets of downtown Houston again. That being said, strolling the streets of downtown Houston is definitely not as much fun as strolling the streets of Montmartre in Paris! It was definitely a highlight of our trip last year! #parisjetaime#parigi#loveparis#visitparis#parismaville#montmartre Read more…

3 weeks agoby thewanderingweekendersOne of the things that we had to see when we were in Paris was the Eiffel Tower, I mean how could you not go to Paris and at least see it! We had some time to kill before our lift time, so we spent some time just relaxing on the grass gazing up at all of its beauty. The only thing that would have made it better was a bottle of wine, which unfortunately this pregnant lady couldn’t partake in! #parisjetaime#parigi#loveparis#visitparis#parismaville#eiffeltower Read more…

3 weeks agoby thewanderingweekendersIt’s so hard to believe that it’s officially my last week of maternity leave and that I’ll be heading back to work after 12 weeks with my girls! It’s definitely been crazy the past couple of months with two newborns and I haven’t had the chance to really look back on pictures from trips in order to get them ready for “the Gram”. We decided to use this last week of maternity leave as a dry run for daycare so this afternoon I spent a little time looking through and editing some pictures from our trip to Paris last year

2 months agoby thewanderingweekendersIn Houston it’s a running joke that we have two seasons summer and summer. Needless to say the entire city freaked out when we got our first dose of winter in the form of actual snow that stuck to the ground! We loved our little winter wonderland, even if it was pretty much melted by lunchtime! #houston#texas#htx#houstonblogger#texasblogger#snow Read more…